The Proposition

Judith Leyster painted The Proposition around 1631, one of her most frequently discussed works depicting a man placing his hand on a woman's shoulder and offering money while she continues her sewing without acknowledging him. The subject was a standard Dutch moral genre subject — the solicitation of a virtuous woman — but Leyster's treatment is distinctive: the woman's absorption in her work, her refusal to engage with the man's offer, renders her not as the passive victim of conventional moralizing but as an active agent of her own virtue. The candlelit setting and the warm, intimate treatment of the two figures gives the moral scene an ambiguity of social meaning that distinguishes it from more didactic treatments of the same subject.

The candlelit scene creates an intimate, uncomfortable atmosphere, with the woman's turned-away posture and the man's insistent gesture conveying the social dynamics of the proposition through subtle body language.